Omega Prime wrote:is it me or was this battle skewed towards trattoria?

If anything I tried to skew it towards the Immortals in the initial setup, since that was the outcome that I had already plotted the storyline for (oh well, life is unexpected sometimes...)

I changed the mechanic for taking damage in BrikSpace to make it more practical to run as well as less arbitrary (the old rule was literally knock a chunk off...), which might result in an overly aggressive ruleset. So this battle was partly a playtest of that. If stuff dies too easily then games tend to devolve into "turn order massacre" which I've seen in quite a few of my other chat battles. I've thought about a few ways to mitigate this:-More creative turn ordering (I did this here by splitting up capitals and sub-capitals, which in my opinion helped a little bit)-More factions and alliances (you can intersperse them to result in an effect similar to creative turn ordering). -Less aggressive setup and gameplay - might entail nerfing some weapons and not using more powerful units (such as battleships and dreadnoughts in microspace). Even if sides are balanced in having powerful units, they can nonetheless upset the game compared to having lots of weak units. --I'm considering buffing HP in BrikSpace so ships are more surviveable to this end.-More cover and interesting battlefield elements so that tactics are more than just "move and shoot". -Doing response fire, although to be fair this requires action on the players' parts as well. -Making sure players are well-informed about the forces they're commanding. For example, in this battle I thought the Tratt superweapons were balanced by the literally dozens of black hole missiles on the Immortal ships, but DJ Squidley missed them in the huge pile of ship stats I sent him (I don't blame him tbh, it was a lot) and didn't use them when he had the chance.

Dr. Minase, Junior Legislator of the 50th District: My fellow Trattorians, a terrible contretemps befell the 50th District and the Meritocratic Republic of Trattoria today. Never before in the history of our nation has a foreign power attempted to strike at our heartlands in this manner. It is with great relief that I come before you all to report that we stymied this encroachment with minimal casualties and damage to property and infrastructure.

Legislator Minase: On behalf of myself, my colleague Legislator Ramachandran, and our constituents, we would like to thank Dr. Desroches, Stratego of the Sector V fleet, for his efforts in eliminating the Immortal forces. As chair of the Legislative Committee on the Armed Forces, I will recommend Dr. Desroches for official commendation for the intelligence and lucent cognition he displayed in this trying ordeal. Stratego Desroches: Thank you, it honors me to serve Trattoria so well.

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Planet Mirai, Meritocratic Republic of Trattoria

Dr. Kamishiraishi, Junior Legislator of the 23rd District: Yes, thank you for asking. I was indeed traveling through the Commercium system during the battle, and I couldn’t get out because of the no-fly zone. Trattorian Intelligence has briefed me that the Immortals had a secret secondary objective to board my shuttle and kidnap me for some nefarious ends, a task in which they thankfully failed. Having directly seen the threat they pose firsthand, I have finally decided to lend my support to the Trattorian Non-Aggression Pact with M-Throne so that we may better focus on the more imminent extragalactic belligerent.

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Conselia, planet Trattoria, Meritocratic Republic of Trattoria

Dr. Singh, Junior Legislator of the 1st District: At long last, two and a half years after our ambassadors met with M-Throne’s and signed the non-aggression pact, we finally ratified it and made it law. Now we have an entire new galaxy’s worth of wealth to trade and transact with. It took us long enough to make up our minds, don’t you think?

Dr. Fonténe, Speaker of the Legislature: Your NAP only passed with my support, the support that as neutral speaker I am traditionally to withhold. You asked me specially to vote for this treaty. Why?Legislator Singh: Because I thought it was important. Speaker Fonténe: Wrong. You asked because your old friends at Goldman Sucks think it’s important. I lent my vote for this matter not because you or GS asked, but because I thought it was important myself. Do not try to deceive me in such a manner again, Dr. Singh.

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Undisclosed location

Accountant: Whaaa - I’m still alive? Where am I? Who the fuck are you?

Omega Prime wrote:is it me or was this battle skewed towards trattoria?

If anything I tried to skew it towards the Immortals in the initial setup, since that was the outcome that I had already plotted the storyline for (oh well, life is unexpected sometimes...)

-Making sure players are well-informed about the forces they're commanding. For example, in this battle I thought the Tratt superweapons were balanced by the literally dozens of black hole missiles on the Immortal ships, but DJ Squidley missed them in the huge pile of ship stats I sent him (I don't blame him tbh, it was a lot) and didn't use them when he had the chance.

Oh, that explains it. It looked to me that the Trattorians were going to win right from turn 1 becausea) no black holes were mentioned andb) the Trattorians had giant space superweapons.

gotta love knitting needles. i can make you a scarf. i can make a hat. i can stab your eyes out. i can make mittens.

Omega Prime wrote:is it me or was this battle skewed towards trattoria?

If anything I tried to skew it towards the Immortals in the initial setup, since that was the outcome that I had already plotted the storyline for (oh well, life is unexpected sometimes...)

-Making sure players are well-informed about the forces they're commanding. For example, in this battle I thought the Tratt superweapons were balanced by the literally dozens of black hole missiles on the Immortal ships, but DJ Squidley missed them in the huge pile of ship stats I sent him (I don't blame him tbh, it was a lot) and didn't use them when he had the chance.

Oh, that explains it. It looked to me that the Trattorians were going to win right from turn 1 becausea) no black holes were mentioned andb) the Trattorians had giant space superweapons.

The Misanthrope cannons were pretty potent. DJ's mistake was going all in against my capitals. The support ships can reliably hit due to their smaller weapons, so it was a godsend that he left mine unmolested on the first turn, let me use them to vapourise his. From that point my damage projection was secure for the rest of the fight, while you'll notice he was missing more.

FUN: Um... 12/20? I'm okay with space battles, but this looks like it was mostly done in LDD or whatever that program is. Pretty one-sided battle, too. I dunno, this didn't feel that... entertaining. Sure, things went boom, but meh? Not enough actual Lego seemed to have been harmed in this battle. It feels like this was done more for advancement of a specific plot, and just happened to come out in time to be included in the Rekon 2018 contest.VIOLENCE: 6/10 Oh, lots of ships went boom. Spectacularly in many cases, but no blood. *shrug* I dunno, just didn't feel the violence factor in this one. A really good battle has blood and destruction. This focuses too much on the latter and has none of the former.PHOTOGRAPHY: 9/10 I have to admit, it was pretty easy to follow the action visually. But again, this looks like it was mostly CG.WRITING: 10/10 You DO have an excellent turn of phrase, making it easy to follow the battle action. Each photo had appropriate captions. Overall, excellent writing quality.STORY: Yeah, 10/10. You REALLY shine at storytelling. Plot twists, fun little snide comments, and lots of interesting interaction between your characters. No mention of the New Year, but seriously, between context and actual storytelling? Top notch!

Immortal War? GOD YES. This is classic Immortal War scenario stuff! Hell, one of the fleets WAS an Immortals force!

To summarize, this was a decent space battle, but while the storytelling, visuals, and writing were top notch, it was kind of lacking in some way. Just didn't feel it. I'm sorry.